The three phases of commercial flight include pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight. During the pre-flight phase, the pilot and/or dispatcher reviews the preparation checklist and identifies any issues that could impact the aircraft during takeoff, landing, or cause problems in flight. These activities are part of the pre-flight phase and are advisory in nature.
In the in-flight phase, pilots primarily rely upon on-board systems and ground-based support for updated information regarding airspace information. Pilot requests for information from ground based systems are event based and at the pilot's discretion. In addition, dispatchers monitoring flights for airlines and corporate aircraft fleets may also send updates based on their tracking of the in-flight aircraft.
As the aircraft takes-off there are numerous possibilities of localized and unexpected situations along the flight-path. These changes might be caused due to one or all of the factors including weather, air and ground traffic, fuel level, winds, turbulence, electric/mechanical problems, airspace restrictions, and diversion to an alternate airport.
Presently known systems for in-flight re-planning and re-routing are limited in several respects. On-board systems are costly and typically have a limited range. Uplinked messages are event based and must be initiated by the pilot. Moreover, they generally relate to current position and do not have the ability to predict upcoming issues along the flight path.
Presently known flight operation systems are further limited in that ground based flight operation specialists can only monitor a certain number of aircraft at a time, for example in the range of 8-20 aircraft. They are labor intensive and thus costly, and are not easily scalable.
Additionally, based on pilot surveys it is believed that the most common conditions leading to heading changes are deviations around weather systems. Altitude changes are most commonly induced by unfavorable winds, icing, or turbulence. Air speed changes are typically initiated in response to turbulence or schedule adherence (i.e., the aircraft running ahead of or behind schedule).
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide in-flight re-routing options which overcome the foregoing limitations. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.